Samsung, Intel prepare wireless devices for AirPlay-like streaming

The WiFi Alliance today unveiled its certification program for Miracast, a new wireless technology for streaming video from phones, laptops, and tablets to television sets.

Samsung is the biggest smartphone vendor to get on board with Miracast, which aims to be an industry-standard alternative to Apple’s AirPlay. Samsung’s Galaxy S III smartphone and its Echo-P Series TV (which was revealed at CES this year but is not on the market yet) were both certified as compatible with Miracast. LG's Optimus G smartphone was also certified.

Miracast builds upon WiFi Direct, a previous effort driven by Intel to enable cross-platform video streaming. WiFi Direct didn’t take off as vendors hoped, but Intel is on board again with Miracast, which takes the basic WiFi Direct technology and makes it more user-friendly.

To get the certification program going, there are six testbed devices against which all others will be tested to ensure interoperability. Intel’s contribution is the Centrino Advanced-N 6235 AGN wireless adapter. Wireless cards and adapters were also contributed by Broadcom, Marvell, MediaTek, Ralink, and Realtek. Sony's mobile division and NVIDIA also expressed support for the program, although they did not get devices into the testbed. NVIDIA reportedly plans to support Miracast in its Tegra 3 chips.

Samsung has its own Miracast-based implementation called AllShare Cast built into the Galaxy S III, Galaxy Note 10.1, Galaxy Note II, and other devices. But joining Miracast will ensure that a Samsung phone will stream to a non-Samsung TV, as the Miracast certification guarantees interoperability.

While Samsung is the first consumer device maker to get products certified, the WiFi Alliance expects broad adoption across different vendors’ products.

"The primary use cases will be enabled at launch. This isn’t going to take years for the devices to proliferate," WiFi Alliance Senior Marketing Manager Kevin Robinson told Ars. He expects a big push in the upcoming holiday season and into 2013. "You can expect to see tablets, phones, laptops, televisions, and set-top boxes with Miracast," Robinson said.

Because Miracast negotiates the connections between devices and selects the right codecs and resolutions, streaming should be pretty close to a one-click process for users. In addition to streaming from devices to big screen TVs, Miracast could enable streaming content from a cable box to a tablet, or from a laptop to a projector in business settings.

Miracast runs on 802.11n, using both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. Miracast supports WPA2 security and copyright protection systems like HDCP to prevent users from making copies of content. Robinson said this will ensure that copyright owners don’t block content from being used with Miracast.

"Not all solutions support premium content," he said. "It’s important that all these types of content are supported."

Promoted Comments

Well hopefully this works out particularity for display mirroring which Intel's efforts (which pre-date Apples) never really got off the ground.

It's also a tacit acknowledgement what a total mess DLNA is and the likes of Samsung/Sony & many others contributed to that so I hope it's not repeated. Different codecs, extensions to the standard, broken and custom DLNA implementations.

Miracast has to be absolutely iron fisted with no compromises no matter who whines to them.

It’s great this will be peer-to-peer instead of AirPlay’s current requirement of both devices being on the same network. I was at a meeting yesterday and AirPlay was fantastic to show off a presentation, but it would have been even better had I not needed to log on to their WiFi.

I suppose we'll be inundated with fanboys claiming this is just more copying of Apple, who no doubt must have invented wireless streaming, despite the fact it's been happening for donkey's years before anyone ever heard of "Airplay".

I suppose we'll be inundated with fanboys claiming this is just more copying of Apple, who no doubt must have invented wireless streaming, despite the fact it's been happening for donkey's years before anyone ever heard of "Airplay".

Especially when Intel had their Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) in laptops for quite some time.

But it's nice that a standard solution is on the way. I wonder what the latency of this thing will be like.

"industry-standard alternative" that will end up being laced with hidden patents used for lawsuits later when FRAND licensing doesn't slow your competitors enough.

As opposed to freeloaders that utilize essential patents and refuse to compensate the patent holder while at the same time demanding $20 per device for such groundbreaking and essential patents like rounded icons, bounce back and slide to unlock?

"industry-standard alternative" that will end up being laced with hidden patents used for lawsuits later when FRAND licensing doesn't slow your competitors enough.

As opposed to freeloaders that utilize essential patents and refuse to compensate the patent holder while at the same time demanding $20 per device for such groundbreaking and essential patents like rounded icons, bounce back and slide to unlock?

I suppose we'll be inundated with fanboys claiming this is just more copying of Apple, who no doubt must have invented wireless streaming, despite the fact it's been happening for donkey's years before anyone ever heard of "Airplay".

I expect most Apple users are simply enjoying technology and services years before everyone else. Yes, the technology has been around for a while, but it's only sometime next year that your average non-Apple consumer can think about having it. It seems to be only Apple that can be bothered taking these raw technologies and shaping them into something really great. The rest of the industry is then (begrudgingly) dragged along.

I suppose we'll be inundated with fanboys claiming this is just more copying of Apple, who no doubt must have invented wireless streaming, despite the fact it's been happening for donkey's years before anyone ever heard of "Airplay".

If it's been happening for "donkey's years," why is Samsung working on a new protocol now?

Surely all these things are just a stop gap? The goal should be to have every device sync to a personal cloud which can then be accessed by every other device. I don't want to waste my phone battery just to play content on a TV which is plugged in, it seems foolish.

This is all fairly easily achievable with technology in existence today, Dropbox does this in a very basic way for me. The Air-Play method just seems silly. Am I missing something?

If it's been happening for "donkey's years," why is Samsung working on a new protocol now?

Samsung has its own implementation already, withing their AllShare line (I think its called AllCast). But that implementation is proprietary ( just like Apple's one is proprietary ) and works between Samsung phones and Samsung TVs.

This initiative is "standard" meaning it should work between devices from diffrerent vendors (Samsung phone sending to LG TV etc). So I think this is good initiative, regardless of "who was first".

Surely all these things are just a stop gap? The goal should be to have every device sync to a personal cloud which can then be accessed by every other device. I don't want to waste my phone battery just to play content on a TV which is plugged in, it seems foolish.

This is all fairly easily achievable with technology in existence today, Dropbox does this in a very basic way for me. The Air-Play method just seems silly. Am I missing something?

For audio and video, you're probably right. For other uses, it's better if the TV is more like a thin client - it doesn't have to run apps to deal with all the different formats (suppose you want to show a pdf presentation on it) and controlling it from your phone is much more convenient than with a TV remote. What if you want to show something on google maps? Will you download an app to your TV and control it with a shitty TV remote?

Well hopefully this works out particularity for display mirroring which Intel's efforts (which pre-date Apples) never really got off the ground.

It's also a tacit acknowledgement what a total mess DLNA is and the likes of Samsung/Sony & many others contributed to that so I hope it's not repeated. Different codecs, extensions to the standard, broken and custom DLNA implementations.

Miracast has to be absolutely iron fisted with no compromises no matter who whines to them.

Especially when Intel had their Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) in laptops for quite some time.

Yeah, that sure is attractive </sarcasm>. Around $100 (soon to be $60, per Anandtech) for a receiver that with a Sandy Bridge CPU gets you 250ms latency (don't bother trying to game with that, even the 60ms from Ivy Bridge could be problematic) for a recompressed image vs about $5 for a HDMI cable.

It's nice that Intel will be supporting this new standard. I suppose if I were at a hotel or something and the TV was a Miracast receiver, I'd use it. Can't really see it being a good solution vs a cable otherwise. The bandwidth of a few strings of copper is really pretty impressive.

Surely all these things are just a stop gap? The goal should be to have every device sync to a personal cloud which can then be accessed by every other device. I don't want to waste my phone battery just to play content on a TV which is plugged in, it seems foolish.

This is all fairly easily achievable with technology in existence today, Dropbox does this in a very basic way for me. The Air-Play method just seems silly. Am I missing something?

For audio and video, you're probably right. For other uses, it's better if the TV is more like a thin client - it doesn't have to run apps to deal with all the different formats (suppose you want to show a pdf presentation on it) and controlling it from your phone is much more convenient than with a TV remote. What if you want to show something on google maps? Will you download an app to your TV and control it with a shitty TV remote?

Good point, hadn't thought about that.

Although I'd prefer apps to be mirrored between devices and I could use my phone as a remote, again to save on battery life. When will we see a touch screen type TV remote? probably when they become significantly cheaper and made from plastic.

I suppose we'll be inundated with fanboys claiming this is just more copying of Apple, who no doubt must have invented wireless streaming, despite the fact it's been happening for donkey's years before anyone ever heard of "Airplay".

If it's been happening for "donkey's years," why is Samsung working on a new protocol now?

Airplay and Miracast are little different from DLNA that has been around for years. The primary issue that DLNA has had is that the requirement for a product to be a DLNA product is very loose. The result is that DLNA servers generally had to support each individual DLNA reciever. I've been using DLNA since before Airplay existed.

The primary things that Airplay (and now, hopefully Miracast) brought over DLNA is that any device that supported Airplay was guaranteed to work and any (content) device that supported Airplay could act as either the server or reciever.

I suppose we'll be inundated with fanboys claiming this is just more copying of Apple, who no doubt must have invented wireless streaming, despite the fact it's been happening for donkey's years before anyone ever heard of "Airplay".

If it's been happening for "donkey's years," why is Samsung working on a new protocol now?

Airplay and Miracast are little different from DLNA that has been around for years. The primary issue that DLNA has had is that the requirement for a product to be a DLNA product is very loose. The result is that DLNA servers generally had to support each individual DLNA reciever. I've been using DLNA since before Airplay existed.

The primary things that Airplay (and now, hopefully Miracast) brought over DLNA is that any device that supported Airplay was guaranteed to work and any (content) device that supported Airplay could act as either the server or reciever.

From my point of view, that'd make DNLA largely to be a failure in practice. I had a phone (Galaxy S) that supported DNLA, as well as a TV... and yet it simply didn't work.

Hopefully Miracast will be integrated into Android-proper (and maybe even required in future versions for the hardware), and apps will also be given an API where they'll be able to stream their content (whether it's streaming a video/audio, or a game, or whatever else). Without that, it'll probably be relegated to a special vendor-supplied (meaning absolutely horrible) app, and maybe just mirroring the display if you're lucky.

"Miracast supports WPA2 security, and also copyright protection systems like HDCP to slow down users who make copies of content."

^^^ fixed ^^^

Yeah, I don't know why they'd want to disable output over this. As long as the copy protection on BluRay remains broken they'll be better copies out there - why make things harder for your customers who are willing to give you money?

I suppose we'll be inundated with fanboys claiming this is just more copying of Apple, who no doubt must have invented wireless streaming, despite the fact it's been happening for donkey's years before anyone ever heard of "Airplay".

It is becoming blatantly clear that the only time we ever actually see much of the "Apple invented this first" like comments (let alone be inundated by them), is when people like you with way WAY too many issues post that we're going to be inundated with posts that Apple invented this first.

It is a strange world when Apple fanboys start to sound more neutral and composed than the people claiming Apple fanboys are rabid sheep. Dogs and cats, living together, mass hysteria.

It’s great this will be peer-to-peer instead of AirPlay’s current requirement of both devices being on the same network. I was at a meeting yesterday and AirPlay was fantastic to show off a presentation, but it would have been even better had I not needed to log on to their WiFi.

Surely all these things are just a stop gap? The goal should be to have every device sync to a personal cloud which can then be accessed by every other device. I don't want to waste my phone battery just to play content on a TV which is plugged in, it seems foolish.

This is all fairly easily achievable with technology in existence today, Dropbox does this in a very basic way for me. The Air-Play method just seems silly. Am I missing something?

AirPlay isn't just a new way to hit play and get a video on your TV screen, it is an entirely new way of interacting with entertainment in your living room. It isn't just a different way to do what is already being done. Instead it is something completely new. It normally takes a few sessions of use before the lightbulb really goes off and AirPlay is truly understood.

If dealing with full-length TV shows or movies, it is only mildly appealing. However this entertainment segment is only a small category among many entertainment experiences now available. Here is just one example scenario...

On a recent Saturday evening I had friends over for grilling and beers. While cooking, we were reminiscing about songs from our youth. Every few minutes one of us would remember another song and immediately be able to play it to the stereo that was blaring from the other room. After a few beers, this got quite amusing. Anyone in the room could browse for music and play it on whim.

After dinner we retired to the living room while still chatting away. This is when we all switched to airplaying video instead of audio. Most of us are avid mountain bikers so we normally end up playing "bike porn" (people doing ludicrously impossible things on bikes). Again, this involved people shouting, "oh you've got to see this" followed by them airplaying amazing footage to my full blown home theater system.

You see, airplay turns stereos and home theaters into interactive and social experiences. No longer are we mindless drones that devote 100% attention to a full length album, tv or movie. With airplay, the TV becomes an opportunity for show-and-tell, TV becomes a social experience where people share things with friends and family. This includes everything from web pages, to photos, to music and movies.

And that's just one example. Beyond that, there is the integration of browsing/interaction with the ability to project that browsing or the final selection to a large screen. Channel surfing is for cavemen.

If it's been happening for "donkey's years," why is Samsung working on a new protocol now?

Samsung has its own implementation already, withing their AllShare line (I think its called AllCast). But that implementation is proprietary ( just like Apple's one is proprietary ) and works between Samsung phones and Samsung TVs.

This initiative is "standard" meaning it should work between devices from diffrerent vendors (Samsung phone sending to LG TV etc). So I think this is good initiative, regardless of "who was first".

You can mirror your Windows computer to your Apple TV device btw. There is a shareware program called Air Parrot that works great.

I'm curious - When Apple announced AirPlay, didn't they say it would be offered to third parties? Clearly licensing would be required. Is Apple refusing a license to a direct competitor, asking for more then Samsung is willing to pay, or is Samsung designing around because "Not Invented Here"?

I'm curious - When Apple announced AirPlay, didn't they say it would be offered to third parties? Clearly licensing would be required. Is Apple refusing a license to a direct competitor, asking for more then Samsung is willing to pay, or is Samsung designing around because "Not Invented Here"?

Designing around it. Lots of different ways to do the same thing here. Not a big deal.

I'm curious - When Apple announced AirPlay, didn't they say it would be offered to third parties? Clearly licensing would be required. Is Apple refusing a license to a direct competitor, asking for more then Samsung is willing to pay, or is Samsung designing around because "Not Invented Here"?

They are licensing it to speaker manufacturers. Not clear whether they'd be willing to license it to a third party video receiver, and I doubt they'd ever license transmission capabilities to a competing device.

I'm curious - When Apple announced AirPlay, didn't they say it would be offered to third parties? Clearly licensing would be required. Is Apple refusing a license to a direct competitor, asking for more then Samsung is willing to pay, or is Samsung designing around because "Not Invented Here"?

Designing around it. Lots of different ways to do the same thing here. Not a big deal.

They've licensed it to a couple of receiver and speaker companies, I have no idea if they are blocking Samsung from using it, but I doubt it. It seems like all of the big television/device manufacurers like to make their own custom systems that don't work with anyone else. There may be lot's of different ways to do the same thing, but it's really frustrating when components can't work together on a higher level than pass through, and then the manufacturers abandon their own protocols later anyway.